


Into the Deeps

by willowoak_walker



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe: Mermaids, Gen, Sort Of, the Heterodynes are abominations beneath the waves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-12 15:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12962931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker
Summary: The first time Klaus goes swimming with a Heterodyne he feels like a total Chump. But he does also change amurderousHeterodyne rampage into amischievousone.So that's a plus.





	1. Chapter 1

**The prince came marching down, down,  
** **down, down, down, down,  
** **the prince came marching down, down  
** **down to the drowned town.  
** -Mechanicsburg skipping rhyme  
  
  
  
The first time Klaus goes swimming with a Heterodyne, it goes like this:  


********

  
    Klaus hears shouting from the other side of the pond Doctor Kunstra’s cold-tolerant piranhas live in. He looks up just in time to see a couple of college students throw some struggling kid into the water. The splash is enormous.  


    Klaus drops his books and pulls his shirt off as he runs toward the pond. He vaults over the fence and flings himself into the water. He swims desperately toward the center of the ripples. He’s got to reach the kid before the fish do too much damage.  


    The piranhas rush past him, not bothering to bite in their hurry. Away from the splash. That’s worth telling Doctor Kunstra about. Klaus takes a deep breath and dives toward where the kid has fallen.  


    He can see what the fish are fleeing now. A twisted form of spines and fins curled on the floor, shaking. Klaus looks frantically around for the students’ victim. Nothing.  


    When he looks back, the spiny thing has turned to face him. It’s recognizable now as a humanoid construct, and the face between the fins is one Klaus almost knows. The construct’s eyes are wide, and it grabs Klaus’ wrists, pulling him up toward the surface with powerful strokes of what must be a tail.  


    Klaus’ head breaks water and he draws a deep, desperate breath. He looks to the construct in time to see the fins around its face vanish back into the skin.  


    “Are hyu hokay?” The younger of the Heterodyne boys studying here asks Klaus. He’s lost his glasses, so his blinking might be nearsightedness. His eyes aren’t red.  


    “I’m, yes, I’m fine,” Klaus manages. “Are you?”  


    “Hy’m fine,” the Heterodyne says, “Hy ken breath undervater. Vhy are hyu in here? Ve need to get hyu out!” He starts pulling Klaus again, keeping to the surface of the water.  


    “I saw someone get thrown in here,” Klaus says, sheepish. He just tried to save a Heterodyne from the _water_ , wow.  


    “Hyu come in to get me out?” The Heterodyne boy smiles. “Dot’s sveet!”  


    “Barry!” Klaus and the Heterodyne both look up. The older Heterodyne boy is standing at the edge of the pier, puzzled. “Who’s that?”  


    “He chumped in to safe me!” The younger Heterodyne says. His tail slaps the water behind Klaus as if to emphasize the silliness of it.  


    “Yeah, just call me Chump,” Klaus mutters. The older Heterodyne reaches a hand down to him.  


    “Thenk hyu,” he says, “Hy’m Bill. Hyu’ve met Barry.” Klaus takes Bill’s hand and lets Bill tug him up onto the pier. It doesn’t take Bill any visible effort. Huh.  


    “Klaus,” Klaus says, and reaches down in his turn for Barry. Who shakes his head and treads water.  


    “Hy dun haf clothes on,” Barry says. Bill sighs. He’s wearing perfectly normal clothing (except for the number of trilobites (5)) but no coat. Nothing he can lend his brother.  


    “My things are on the other side of the pond. I’ll go get them,” Klaus offers.  


    “Dot’s very kind of hyu,” Bill says, walking along the pier beside Klaus. Barry swims lazily beside them, the spines of his tail occasionally breaking the surface. “Hy could leaf Barry here und get get him someting from vhere ve’re staying.” Bill looks anxiously at Klaus. “Hy dun vant to get hyu in trouble.”  


    “Bill!” Barry slaps the surface of the water. “Hyu ken’t say hyu vant to mek friends und den scare efferybody off.” Bill raises an eyebrow and cocks his head to once side.  


    “Maaaaaaaybe hyu should haf brought some spare clothes,” he says. Barry submerges completely and stills. Klaus watches the dark shape of him fall behind for a moment, then stops walking. “Hy’m missing someting, aren’t Hy?” Bill says. His eyebrows are creeping together above his eyes.  


    “Some students — I couldn’t see who across the pond—” Klaus says, “Threw him in.” Watching the fury transform Bill’s face is an education in anger. That’s the fury that holds half the continent in paralyzing fear.  


    “I think that’s what they want,” Klaus finds himself saying. “That anger.” Bill stills. He looks directly into Klaus’ eyes. Klaus blinks.  


    “Go on,” Bill says. Klaus takes a breath.  


    “They want to get you in a bind,” he says. “You let this go, it’s hunting season on Heterodynes. You hurt them over this—” Klaus shrugs. “If you’re scary, they’re right to be scared of you.”  


    Bill takes a deep, slow breath. He lets it out in something unnervingly like a hum.  


    “Hy suppose it vas chust a prank,” he says. “It’s not as if _vater_ ken hurt him.” Klaus is tempted to let him go on thinking that but — no. Besides, he’s going to have to tell Doctor Kunstra about this anyway.  


    “I guess they know Heterodynes scare fish,” Klaus says, and starts walking. He didn’t, but he lives pretty far from Heterodyne territory. Wulfenbachs mostly mail their tribute. Bill doesn’t follow him. Klaus is just starting to worry when he hears the pounding of feet. Bill grabs him and spins him around.  


    “Dey knew vat?”  


    “That Heterodynes scare fish…” Klaus trails off at the look in Bill’s eyes. “You don’t, do you.” It’s not really a question. “That’s not a thing.”  


    “No,” Bill says. “Vhat’s in here?”  


    “Piranhas,” Klaus says. “Doctor Kunstra’s cold-tolerant version.” Bill’s got that Heterodyne look in his eyes again, but all he does is bend down and slap the water with an open palm. A dark shape rises up under Bill’s hand and Barry’s head breaks water.  


    “ _Fish_ , Barry” Bill snaps.  


    “My fish deflector must be vorking?” Barry looks wide-eyed from Bill to Klaus and back. He still doesn’t have his glasses.  


    “They were all swimming away from him when I got there,” Klaus says reassuringly. Bill rounds on him.  


    “Hyu is tellink me dese keeds trew Barry in vith de piranhas und if I do anyting about it Hy’m de bad guy.”  


    “No,” Klaus says patiently. Maybe Mother is right about his lack of self-preservation instinct. “They’ll make you sound like the bad guy if you hurt them. Doctor Kunstra’s going to come down on them like a sack of bricks for throwing someone in — what you should do is prank them unmercifully.” Bill raises a dubious eyebrow. “As if this weren’t a real threat of any kind. Keep them scared of you because you’re strong, not because you’re vicious. You want friends?” Klaus cuts his rant off. Bill’s face is slowly transforming from incandescent fury to unabashed glee. Barry — Klaus glances down — is sinking beneath the water again, forgetting to swim.  


    “Dey’re not ... _obliged_... to obey us,” Bill says, as if this is a brand new idea. Barry bursts from the water, hands above his head.  


    “Trilobites!” Barry yells joyfully. “Trilobites everywhere!” The splash Barry makes when he hits the water again gets water in his eyes. That’s definitely what’s going on with his face. He’s not getting emotional about a couple of privileged little monsters getting let out of their cages for the first time. He’s not.  


    Bill grabs Klaus’ hand and begins dragging him around the edge of the pond at a half-run. Klaus stumbles for a moment before catching up.  


    “Hyu said hyu haf some clothes Barry could borrow?” Bill says. Klaus nods. “Ve need to find dem, get hyu some dry clothes of hyu own, too, und den ve take hyu out to dinner or someting — vhen is confenient for hyu I dun vant to mek hyu late,” Bill babbles manically.  


    Oh, dear. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  


   


	2. Incident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for someone being told to commit suicide. (He does NOT.)
> 
> I'm still experimenting with the medium this means sparky fugue the way the wobbly speech bubbles in the comic do.

**Sirens, Mermaids, sea-serpents, pike, piranhas, and drowning-weed can all step aside;  
the most dangerous thing in the water is the Heterodyne. Swimming with one is suicide.  
** — How I Survived Things that Can Kill You, Marco Polo

The second time Klaus goes swimming with a Heterodyne, someone tells him to. 

“All I’m saying,” Margolotta says, “Is that, however human the construct, the change, by definition, makes them less human. Why should we treat someone less than human with the same respect with which we treat our peers?” Klaus keeps his head down and eats his pie.

“Indeed, indeed,” Wilhelm says, nodding soberly. “Of course, the people upon whom changes have been imposed are to be pitied, but they are still less than human.” Klaus isn’t going to say anything, he isn’t going to say anything.

“How, exactly, are you defining ‘human’?” Klaus asks. He manages to keep his voice level, at least. The Fifty Families brats sitting in a well-dressed sea around the table stare at him as if he’d sprung fallen from the sky a moment ago, and never mind that he had been sitting here first.

“Well, I think we all know what ‘human’ means,” says someone Klaus hates too much to learn the name of. If you’re trying to avoid committing bloody vengeance it helps not to have a name for the face.

“We are scientists,” Klaus says, “Precision is important.” He keeps his hands tucked in his lap. His sleeves aren’t long enough to hide the stitches.

“Very well,” Margolotta says, “By ‘human’ I mean the unmodified child of unmodified parents.”

“But that only pushes it back a generation, my dear,” Wilhelm says. He calls every woman ‘my dear’, and by the tension in Margolotta’s grasp on her knife, Klaus isn’t the only one who finds it irritating. “How if we use a strictly biological definition, as we do with animals?” A number of nobles gasp in offense, and Klaus takes advantage of their attention being elsewhere to drain his cup. “After all,” Wilhelm continues, “It is the difference between the human and the animal that we are attempting to codify.”

Klaus puts down his cup and piles his silverware onto his plate. His lunch is only half-finished, but —

“Ha! Now I see why he interrupts!” The speaker is one of the asses who threw Barry Heterodyne into the piranha pond yesterday, which would be enough to make Klaus dislike him even if he weren’t pointing as if Klaus were a particularly disgusting slug. Pointing at the stitches on Klaus’ wrist.  
Several of the noble brats draw back.

“There is a servant’s mess,” Margolotta says coldly.

“I am a student,” Klaus says. He picks up his plate and straightens to his full height. Sometimes he can impose his way out of a situation.

“What, Beetle lets Patchworks in?” Some noble sniffs. Klaus drops his plate back onto the table. “I know he had to let in the Heterodynes, but—”

“Ha!” The Barry-tosser thinks he has a funny notion now. “You should go swim with the Heterodynes, Rag-doll, since they’re handy. That’ll solve that problem!”

“Do you know,” Klaus says through clenched teeth, fury, and shame, “I think I shall. They’re better company.” The Heterodynes staked out a table by the door in the first week — they’re at it now. By the time Klaus reaches them, he’s just tired.

“Bill,” Klaus says, “Barry, do you want to go swimming?”

“YEZ!” Barry shouts, flinging up his hands and dropping the … shiny golden ball thing … he’s working on to the table. “C’mon, Bill, let’s go svimming!”

“But all our targets are in dis room,” Bill says, voice edged with Spark, “And I am almost done.”

“But Klaus vants to go svimming,” Barry says, tugging at his brother’s sleeve.

“Klaus?” Bill looks up, sliding out of the fugue into flattering delight. “Hy tought hyu vere eating vith de red-heads!” Klaus looks back at his former table. A number of them do have that actually red hair that’s supposed to come with Storm King ancestry.

“I was,” Klaus says. Tension climbs back up his spine. “But one of them told me to go swim with you, and that sounded like more fun.”

“Yah!” Barry grabs Klaus’ sleeve now. “Hyu gots to show me how hyu move hyu feets!”

“Hyu’ve seen people svim vith feet before, Barry,” Bill mutters thoughtfully. He fits the casing of his project together with a click and cuts off Barry's response. “Hour Poppa said dot ‘Go svim vith de Heterodynes’ meant ‘Go keel hyuself’ to de tourists.”

Klaus has regrets. He also has Barry Heterodyne clinging possessively to one arm and a functional sense of self-preservation. “It does,” he says, “But I’m not trying to kill myself.”

“Goot,” Bill says, and he’s gone in the fugue and has a completed project. He drops on of Barry’s shimmery golden balls into the open mouth of his piece and brings it up as he stands. “Ho _kay_ ,” Bill yells, turning the whole cafeteria to face him, “Hyu ken hate hus, hokay, you trow mine brodder in vith de feeshes, _very fonny_ , hyu use hour name to tell piple to keel demselfs, _hokay, Hy’m DONE!_ ” He fires the golden ball toward the center of the cafeteria. It bursts over the noble’s table into a spreading golden mist. It doesn’t look dangerous, and no-one seems to be dying… Barry throws another golden ball as Bill reloads.  
“Hyu vant to tread on de name of Heterodyne? Den _do_. Hyu vant to use us as a threat, look to hyu veapons ,” Bill yells. He fires another ball, this one directly into the face of a particularly nasty bully. Who sputters and wipes at his eyes, but otherwise seems fine. “Hyu vant to use us to get rid of piple? SEND DEM HOUR VAY.” Bill sighs out into the spreading golden mist. It eddies away from his mouth as if startled.  
“Iz alvays nize to haff friends.”

Barry grabs Bill and Klaus by one arm each and starts dragging them out the door. Klaus goes with it.

“What does that stuff do?” Klaus asks.

“Efferyting dey touch gun haff golden trilobites on it,” Barry says. He grins up at Klaus. Bill is still muttering about ‘showing dem all’. “Ve’d best be vashing it off. Vouldn’t do to be caught in hour own trap.” Klaus points them to the ornamental lake the Tyrant made last week. “Prank,” Barry corrects himself.

“That won’t upset him?” Klaus jerks his head down at Bill.

“Vot, vater? No, no,” Barry says. “Might eeffen calm him down some.”

“Good,” Klaus says, and jumps in the lake.


End file.
